CHEESED OFF

today (sunday) the usual bunch of singaporean guys came over to my house to gather, then play soccer at the fields nearby. over the wkend, i have been bitchily complaining abt a guy who keeps telling me to learn to cook (in addition to that cloyingly sticky housemate's gf). and guess what
today he did it again!! in a group setting, he said, "ay, all your housemates can cook very well leh."
i knew what was coming, but i suppressed my annoyance. "yah i know, they are all gd cooks."
"So hor, next time i come here, you must learn to cook something and let me eat."

WAH PIANG

i tell u, if it was one on one, i'd first give him a PIERCING ICY STARE and if he still doesnt get the message, i'll show him the finger. if that doesnt work either, pass me the machete.

THERE ARE AT LEAST THREE THINGS IN THOSE STATEMENTS WHICH I TAKE OFFENCE TO

1. One of the dishes cooked by my housemate and which he praised was a ginseng chicken soup. that was an all-in-one ginseng packet + chicken drumsticks + water all boiled together. not that there is anything wrong with cooking using instant spices etc, but how can that possibly qualify as a good measure of a person's cooking skills?

2. Is it any concern of his whether i can cook or not? or whether i choose to upgrade myself by learning from my housemates whose skills i admit are not bad at all? (this is the same freaking idiot who told me point blank in the first few days that "HP (a girl who was here) can cook very well. how abt you?". to that, i answered a uncharacteristically icy "I'm not HP.")

3. If i do learn some better cooking skills, from my housemates or otherwise, HE IS THE LAST PERSON I WILL COOK FOR. there are so many others in line before him! such as my family, my frens, u guys reading my blog, and just abt 4 million other singaporeans whom i dont know......

Since i'm already so worked up, I might as well relate the housemate's gf's conversation with me over msn.

she: "I know how to cook chicken chop, and i want to cook for my bf."
"so how do u normally cook chicken chop?"

me: "I dont cook chicken chop."
(for a very simple reason... i'll have to debone the drumsticks and i might as well just bake the whole thing on bone in oven to get roast chicken. lazy, quick and tasty.)

she: "Hahaha... you only cook spaghetti is it???!!!"
"must learn how to cook others"
"u still need to get married you know????"



................................



After bitching real time to a couple of frens, i calmed down enough to reply politically correctly:
"Well, i don't intend to cook all the time, for myself or my future partner"

if not for some stupid self restraint, i'd have fired off a quick "U ARE A LOSER".

with regards to this girl and the guy i glamorously mentioned above, i dont care if they choose to live by their "girl must cook to get married" belief, but please just leave me alone and dont keep harping on it. not being a fantastically gd cook DOES NOT MAKE ME A LESSER PERSON OR GIRL.

wat's wrong with the world????

btw, if i had given any smart and truthful answer such as
"well, i'd be looking for a husband who won't expect me to cook for him all the time."

i'll just get one standard reply:
"Oh yah hor, i forgot. you are from rgs one rite?"

FREAKING IDIOTS

quick pics of half-completed walk

typical view of the hills thru some vegetation...


is this sapling sheltered and protected?


my tired hk boss


walk and walk


a pile of chopped up wood......can u see bart simpson??


here he is!


now where is winnie the pooh?


red green blue - end of trip

gloom

i've been feeling rather down and antisocial these few days... and it doesnt seem like my mood will change anytime soon. maybe it's because I haven't secured a satisfactory way of getting to work, or maybe it's just the weather... sucks man..
everyday the sun rises by 2 min later than the day before...
well, i think the daylight saving stuff will kick in at the end of this wk, so just have to tahan and see how. maybe fri will be cab day..
sigh...dunno why i am so upset abt transportation. it will just be a matter of whether i am willing to part with my money for safety and comfort. not that i can't manage to hire a cab or something...i just need to call the taxi co.
i think it's possibly the fact that surviving/living in uk is so difficult. the very grains of rice i chew each day has to be carried home in my backpack, while i pedal away on my bike, dodging cars and pedestrians along the way. stupid garlic has to be chopped and a million things washed, just to have an edible meal...

and i can't stand my housemate's gf. she keeps msning me but i dont even know her! and she is so "deh"... and does silly things like calling her bf "adam", just coz her name is eve. like now, she is msning me "is adam home yet?"
ugh... and i have to give up my rm to the two of them when she comes over in dec! the most i will do is sleep in his bed and they sleep in my bed, but no way will i give up the use of my bathroom, esp when i need to wash up in the morning and bathe in the afternoon. heck care if she gets woken up. they have even casually discussed on ways of locking the room from the inside. we WILL see abt that!

rite at this very moment, i'm their topic of conversation.....something abt me from rgs and vj.............................................

disappointed

today i abandoned my bicycle and experimented with different ways of getting to and fro work. in the morning, i hired a cab. nobody wanted to share, so i took it alone. the 15 min ride cost 8.50GBP. ok, successful experiment. i had said that i would take it alone, even if nobody wanted to share, so i can't really complain that i had to pay the full cab fare by myself. BUT everyone was interested in knowing the results of my experiments today; how long it took for the journey, how much i paid, etc. immediately i thought of what my father said a few wks ago. i was toying with the idea of buying a cheap car for the 3 or 4 mths of winter, and selling it off before the end of my stay in uk. my housemates were very excited FOR ME and kept urging me to buy a car. when i said that it'd cost a lot, just for the insurance alone, 2 of them offered to pay a third each of the petrol. hello.....how much is petrol? how much is the insurance? how much is the ownership transfer fees and road tax? i didn't realise much at that time, just had a nagging thought that it's not fair. then when i related that to my father, he said they were trying to take advantage of me. if they want to share, got to share all the costs, not just the petrol. WHICH MADE PERFECT SENSE!

Once money is involved, i am on my own, really. I just hate the idea that they might be taking me for a fool, and trying to take advantage of me. There is a famous chinese phrase "fang2 ren2 zhi1 xin1 bu4 ke3 wu2", or, you must always be on guard agst others. i heard that advice many times over the yrs, and even more frequently when i was abt to come over. since i've touched down in Manchester, i've been trying unsuccessfully to drill that in, but i think this car incident did the trick. finally.

anyway back to today. so i took cab in the morning. and then 2 buses back. the journey back took abt 1 and half hrs, and cost 1.50GBP. Not sure if i'm gg to take another bus route tomorrow or just cycle. it IS getting darker now. when i cycle and leave the house in the morning at 7:20am, the sky is like sg at 6:35am, and it remains darker for an additional 2 min a day due to the approaching winter. it's like dawn. the sky is still quite a deep blue and the sun doesn't appear yet.

the other option of taking 3 buses sounds cumbersome, and that includes walking abt 15 min thru almost pitch darkness in a park. how appealing!

i could look for a lift from pple staying ard here. got to ask the secretary to fwd to at least the whole floor (like 200 pple?) for a start and ask if anyone is willing to give me a lift. i think the mkt rate is something like 5GBP a wk, which is really very reasonable already. hope to have some luck asking ard first. if not, then i'll have to tell the whole world via email.

WORST CASE SCENARIO: i take cab on my own every work day, to and fro. that is = 8.50 GBP * 2 (times a day) * 5 (days a wk) * 4 (wks per mth) * 3 (exchange rate into SGD) = 1020 SGD per mth.

if that happens to be the only way........so be it.

cheers..........!

it was really nice to receive emails and msgs wishing me a happy bday.... it's like having a brief summary of my life! (uh, just like how some pple see flashes of their entire life appear when they are abt to pass on)
for example when u see a msg from someone, u will picture that someone in ur mind, u will think abt their mannerisms and quirks. ur past interactions with this person will also surface from the depths of the mind and bring a smile to ur face!

=D

received wishes from family, old frens, new frens and past and present colleagues.
Ah! new colleagues are a different story altogether...
coz in RR, there is this custom where the person celebrating an occasion such as a birthday or just returning from a holiday is supposed to bring some "sweeties and cakes", as the grown men like to call it. emails sometimes go out from the secretary to the whole floor, announcing the precise location of the sweeties (aka candy n chocs). 2 seconds later, heads will pop up and start looking around. 3 seconds later, the FEEDING FERNZY begins!!! pple walk really briskly to the target location and grab the chocs, while saying a cheery, "Happy bday!" to the sweets giver. hahhaa....so i got a lot of ang moh wishes today. =P

okok
i'm starving.
time to go cook dinner............................

cheerio!!

heehee

it was very tempting.........and a bit naughty.........


but i still did it!!!
heeheee...

for those who know a bit of history, it was quite fun to stop a msn conversation in its tracks with a "i gtg sleep now".

hahhahaa...i'm gg to bed laughing! =P

technical announcement

i have not figured out the problem with my tagboard (or rather, i am way too lazy to investigate). so i have just cut out the script for the time being and my blog shall be tagboardless. anyone is welcome to just leave a msg in the latest entry as an alternative. in accordance with local practice, the problem shall stay quietly unresolved until someone comes along and makes a fuss out of it.

i have crossed the 1/3 point of my overseas stint, and suddenly with the italy trip in nov, time seems to be accelerating! its less than a mth to my trip and when i'm back from the trip, its Dec, which comes with a wk of hol after xmas! then we are in 2007 liao!
suddenly it seems like a 200mph wind has swooshed me right to 2007 jan!
i really need to be consciously learning at maximum level, and making the most out of the remaining 5 mths or so. (easier said than done!)

if my bathroom scale is right.........

i now weigh 7.7 stones, after dinner. =P
for the uninitiated, 1 stone = 14 pounds.

Still dont get it?? u have been in the world of kilograms and meters for too long!
my current weight is 48.9kg! hmm...think this is the heaviest i have ever been..and i think it will go up more in the coming months, when i abandon the bike for a more couch-potato mode of transport which is yet to be confirmed.

been quite anti social this wk. when i am on msn, i am always in the offline mode. just dont feel like chatting very much; maybe i'm also at a loss as to how to respond to certain pple? anyway, i should go get msn 8 soon, coz that allows me to msg pple even when i am in the offline mode. perfect evolution of msn - allows the antisocials to be a bit more sociable.

bzb = busy bee

i like my new department, coz there is work to do! yay!!
i dont have to keep asking for work, or trying to surf the intranet and look really busy and interested in the bunch of gibberish on the screen. woohoo!!

day 1, i got a new task. day 2, i got 4 more tasks....so now 5! but i hope there wont be any more new jobs for a while, coz i'll be away on a 3-day course (Gas Turbine Engine Materials) next wk =P

BBBRrrrrrrrrrrr...................coldd cold coldddd !!!!!!!!!

challenge

it is quite a challenge to continue writing as before, when i suddenly realise i have new audiences and that pple whom i thought have stopped visiting this site are actually still reading. hmm!

Heck care!

hmm....a few things to mention today:

1. heater
we have switched on the heater tonight, and its working fine. i can just see the electricity bill shoot skyhigh! it's only the first few days of October! still have nov, dec, jan, feb........jialat. it was 8 deg when i cycled to work this morning, and my ears and hands were pain with cold. Brrr....

2. stupid pple
some pple msn me, and i reply, expecting a further response. BUT time and again, i don't hear from them after that initial msg. WHY? so @#@#% irritating. =( not gg to reply already next time.

3. new job
today was day 2 at my new dept. it felt funny walking past my old dept each time i go to the pantry or washroom. i feel like i should smile and talk to my old dept pple, but i think it's quite silly to do that for like at least 8 times a day?? (to and fro mah). maybe i'll just do it for a couple more days and see how. hehe....

4. AWT
who can guess what's AWT?



AWT


have a nice day!

geeky

a new geeky website someone introduced me to:

Physorg